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The union has been calling on the government to publish response times since at least 2017,in line with other jurisdictions such as NSW,Western Australia and Queensland.
“We will never meet the community’s expectations and our own expectations if we don’t have a realistic audit of the service we’re delivering,” Gatt said.
Opposition police spokesman Brad Battin said the move would increase transparency and reassure Victorians a police vehicle would be dispatched promptly.
But Police Minister Anthony Carbines said the decision was an operational matter that needed to be dealt with by Victoria Police.
This has been challenged by Gatt,who claims the publication of response times is a matter of government policy.
Earlier this month,Victoria’s Auditor-General’s Office found that the force had been unable to adequately measure whether the introduction of thousands of police officers since 2016 had reduced harm or improved the effectiveness of law enforcement in the state.
The report outlined lax accountability standards when tracking staffing requirements and prompted questions about whether police could justify the billions of dollars the Andrews government had poured into law enforcement.
Victoria isone of the most heavily policed states in Australia after a two-decade law-and-order rivalry between Labor and the Coalition helped build the country’s largest law-enforcement organisation.
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Victoria Police now has 22,000 personnel and government funding worth $4 billion a year,surpassing that of NSW Police despite the northern state being three times the size of Victoria and having 1.4 million more people.
Victoria has 327 police staff per 100,000 population,substantially more than NSW (263),or any other eastern state or the ACT. The most heavily policed jurisdiction in the country is the Northern Territory.
As part of its commitment,the opposition has pledged $20 million over four years to fund the association’s Blue Hub program,a pilot mental health support service for law enforcement staff. Labor has committed $4 million into the program if it is re-elected.
There are 830 Victoria Police employees on WorkCover,most due to mental health injuries. This includes sworn police,protective services officers,custody officers and public service staff.
That figure has more than doubled since the 2019-20 financial year,when just under 400 staff lodged mental health claims.
A Victoria Police spokeswoman said the rising rates had been driven by an increase in the reporting of mental health injuries following a mental health review of the workforce in 2016.
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